US consumers are more likely to use the voice assistant in their smartphones over the one in their smart speakers when at home, according to a new report from Fluent.

Among smart home device owners, just 25% turn to such devices for information when in the home, while 47% default to their smartphone's voice assistant.

This signals that US consumers are willing to embrace smart home devices — 20% of American households own a smart home gadget — but they aren't yet on track to reduce their reliance on smartphones when in the home.

Consumers won't shift voice assistant usage toward smart speakers until these homebound devices develop more unique use cases. Consumers' primary reasons for using voice assistants on their smartphones include making calls, asking questions, and checking the weather, all of which are top use cases for smart home devices like smart speakers.

And a major challenge of smart speakers is that most consumers rely on them to conduct simple tasks, like those smartphone voice assistants can accomplish, while complex or lengthy interactions lag. The development of new experiences that expand voice assistants' ability to complete more complex tasks will likely help smart speakers to occupy more and more of consumers' time, and eventually decrease users' reliance on smartphones when in the home.

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